Courier Dispatch

Frank Chadwick:
Scruby Award Winner

By Pat Condray (WKPP)

Don Featherstone (left) presents Frank Chadwick with the Scruby Award for outstanding service to the hobby. Photo by Pat Condray.

The SCRUBY AWARD for outstanding life time contributions to the historical miniatures gaming hobby is presented every two years at HISTORICON. The first went to Don Featherstone in 1989 shortly after Jack Scruby’s death. This year the seventh SCRUBY went to famed game designer Frank Chadwick. The selections are made by the HMGS Legion of Honor, which also inducts up to two new members per year. As Frank Chadwick has been with the Legion since it was established in 1995, two other members were selected.

The new members of the HMGS Legion of Honor are Major Pete Panzeri of HOT, Little Big Horn, and JodieCon fame, and Duncan MacFarlane of Wargames Illustrated (formerly of Miniature Wargames.)

Frank Chadwick is no stranger to hobby related awards. Bob Giglio and Keith Frye cited several in an article for the HMGS East Newsletter (April 1996) which was reproduced and handed out at the Awards Dinner. In it they cite, among others, his induction into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame in 1984 (an honor, I believe, accorded Don Featherstone ten years later.) But in the gathering of sixty or so to celebrate the occasion were several veterans of Wally’s Basement. Most of us were mindful of a particular award Frank Chadwick won long ago.

Indeed, twenty years ago when the conspirators were planning for the Wally’s Basement meeting, Frank’s name was very much on our minds. At ORIGINS 80 Frank’s SYSTEM SEVEN NAPOLEONICS board game counters (cardboard tidily-winks) had been voted “The Best New Miniatures Line” of the year. The voters, predominately board and fantasy role players (to be known in HMGS circles as “tidily-wink pushers” and “frippers”) had shown the abject contempt of “The Greater World of Adventure Gaming” (TGWAG) for our tiny corner of the hobby. This fact was editorialized in THE COURIER, and was a celebrated incentive for historical miniatures gamers to strike out on our own.

Over the years there has been a lot of discussion in the Legion of Honor about the criteria on which the award of the SCRUBY is based. In fact, the overall criterion has been that the recipient shall have made such a contribution that the hobby has been significantly changed for the better. Frank Chadwick’s infamous “tidily-winks” are certainly not the reason he was selected this year by the Legion. But it is true that he had a part, however unwitting, in launching HMGS twenty some years ago.

At the time of Wally’s Basement in November 1981 (Not October as reported in the Editorial of COURIER 82) few of us knew that the infamous Frank Chadwick was even then an avid historical miniatures gamer. Greg Novak, speaking at the Awards Dinner set the time of Frank’s conversion as 1974, when he introduced our SCRUBY winner to the fine art of playing with toy soldiers. Since that time Frank has made many a direct contribution. Notably he revolutionized 20th Century Gaming by upgrading WWII, then Modern and WW1 gaming from skirmish to operational level. Even his SPACE 1889 game, probably the first of the increasingly popular “Victorian Science Fiction” fad, spawned the SOLDIER’S COMPANION colonial rules. VOLLEY AND BAYONET followed covering the black powder eras with a scenic and grand tactical treatment. In recent years since the demise o his GAME DESIGNER’S WORKSHOP Frank has come a long way from cardboard tidily-winks. Most recently he is usually seen doing either V & B with 54mm figures, or his latest project, 54mm WWII skirmish gaming. Greg Novak demonstrated the latest phase of Frank’s (and his own) gaming career by displaying at the dinner “Audrey” Murphy’s 54mm Hellcat Tank Destroyer, with the heroine manning a 50 caliber MG in the turret.

In addition to designing games, Frank played a leading role in the founding of the Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA.) And in the late 1980s when HMGS was running head on against ORIGINS 87 managed by ATLANTICON for GAMA, Frank Chadwick was President of GAMA. As such, he went out of his way to mend fences with HMGS. He ran games at several of our conventions, and attended HISTORICON 87 to talk with members of the HMGS Board of Directors. It was also during his leadership that HMGS MIDWEST arranged to support historical miniatures at GENCON/ORIGINS 88. The latter massive and highly successful convention was the occasion of Don Featherstone’s first visit to the United States, and his popularity there inspired Bob Coggins and Dick Sossi to bring him to HISTORICON 89 for the first SCRUBY.

Bob Coggins, speaking at the dinner, mentioned Frank’s support, as President of GAMA, to HMGS. But if anything, Bob understated that contribution. On several occasions things seemed to be unraveling between HMGS MIDWEST and TSR on the GENCON/ORIGINS 88 preparations. Frank and the rest of the GAMA leadership were always quick to step in and resolve these difficulties. By 1995 when the LEGION was established the formerly notorious board game designer was among the first selected.

To celebrate Frank’s earlier (and infamous) award, Bob Coggins dredged up some surviving SYSTEM SEVEN counters (for the Westphalian Army) which were mounted on a plaque, signed by many Legionaries, and presented to Frank by Jay Hadley, HMGS EAST President.

Legionnaires

Of the new Legionnaires, Duncan MacFarlane is of course famous for his role as Editor, first of MINIATURE WARGAMES, which was pulled from under him by the publishers, then for WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED. His hallmark in each case has been his own spectacular photography which sets off the visual appeal of our hobby. Many of his photographs have graced the covers of HMGS Convention Programs and appear on the HMGS EAST web page. Duncan was as usual present at HISTORICON, but did not attend the dinner.

Pete Panzeri did attend, both he and his wife Jodie (a volunteer and gamer at our conventions since she was sixteen) were back for a short leave from his Korean posting. Pete’s contributions to our hobby have been altogether unusual. He first appeared at HISTORICON ‘87, where as a Lieutenant, he ran two “MAJOR DUNDEE - 1866” battles (for a no-show Game-Master) and returned, after an overseas tour, to HISTORICON ‘91 to gave a presentation and micro armor game based on his recent Gulf War experiences. Subsequently he launched battle simulation studies with miniatures at the Infantry School which became INFANTRYCON, and more recently at the U.S. Military Academy Prep School in New Jersey in the form of “JodiCons.”

Pete also founded HMGS-GI as a service to HMGS members bounced from region to region (and abroad) by the “Exigencies of Service” and other reasons. He has also published historical works such as his Little Big Horn work for Osprey. But an equally effective promotion of the hobby may have been in his leadership of the HMGS at ORIGINS Team (HOT) since 1997. Through this program hundreds of spectacular historical miniatures games appear at GAMA’s “National Adventure Gaming Convention” each year. For their next trick, Pete and Jodie are planning BORODINO 2002 to be held at Fortress Monroe Virginia after their final return from Korea.

In addition to presenting the SCRUBY, Don Featherstone, the Grand Old Man of the Hobby, offered another of his masterful revisions of Shakespeare. Don did not, contrary to some speculation, write Shakespeare’s plays...but he frequently improves on them.

Greg Novak, Adjutant of the Legion of Honor, closed the proceedings with a moment of silence in memory of Charley Sweet, the Knight Commander of the Legion, who passed away earlier this year.

SCRUBY AWARD WINNERS

Don Featherstone, Dick Bryant, Pat Condray, Duke Seifreid, Phil Barker, Bob Coggins, Frank Chadwick.

LEGION MEMBERS

Scruby Winners plus Leo Cronin, Johnson Hood, Hal Thinglum, Dick Sossi, Wally Simon, Jim Getz, Greg Novak, Art Conliffe, Todd Fisher, Jay Hadley, Ed Mohrmann, Charles Sweet (Deceased), Pete Panzeri, Duncan Mcfarlane.

Don Featherstone’s Remarks at the Scruby Award Ceremony

PREPARING FOR A WARGAME
(With the help of William Shakespeare)
AND HENRY THE FIFTH.

In peace there’ s nothing so becomes a wargamer
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.
Disguise fair nature with hard favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like a brass cannon; let the brow o’whelm it
As fearfully as does a galled rock.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath, and, bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noble wargamer
Whose blood is that of fathers who wrote the rules!
Fathers who, like so many Alexanders,
Have at these Conventions from morn ‘til even fought,
And pocketed their dice for lack of argument.
Dishonor not your mothers, for did they not sit
While thouc whom you call fathers painted their armies?
Feel superior to players with troops in other scales,
And teach them how to nargame. And you, good players,
Whose hands were made for wargaming, show us here
The mettle of your army; let us swear
That they are worthy of your painting, which I doubt not;
For there are none of them so mean and base
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot
Rattle your dice And upon this charge
Cry God for Scruby and Frank Chadwick!

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